 Two MSU students win prestigious Goldwater Scholarships
A chemical engineering student who calls Helena home and a mathematician from Dillon are the two most recent Montana State University-Bozeman students to be named as Goldwater Scholars. Laura K. Jennings and Kay Kirkpatrick, both juniors who share many things including Presidential Scholarships and a friendship, learned this week that they are 2001 winners of the top undergraduate scholarship in the country for students studying engineering, math or science. The scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year of undergraduate schooling. Jennings' and Kirkpatrick's awards bring to 37 the number of MSU students who have won prestigious Goldwater Scholarships. MSU numbers among the top institutions in the country in the number for students who have received the prestigious scholarship, according to Goldwater Foundation officials. Kirkpatrick, 20, describes with an infectious giggle her passion for using mathematics as a way to understand chaos. Growing up on the Beaverhead River, the daughter of a psychologist and a carpenter, who is now retired, she aspired to be a brain surgeon, and came to Montana State because the university offered her many opportunities, including a Presidential Scholarship, which is nearly the equivalent of an academic full-ride. However, she said she failed miserably dissecting crickets' brains in her first MSU research project with the MSU Center for Computational Biology. Instead, she became fascinated with the Center's use of mathematical models to predict voltage traces in cricket ganglia, fueling her fascination with higher mathematics. A workshop last summer at North Carolina State University allowed Kirkpatrick to be a part of a team that used differential equations to model the effects of a delay between initial infection and virus production by HIV-infected cells. Kirkpatrick said the results of the published research may be helpful to scientists in basic AIDS research. In addition to mathematics, Kirkpatrick is an accomplished pianist who loves to do anything outdoors including rock climbing, "even though it is hard on my piano fingers." She plans on entering a Ph.D. program that will allow her to return to research and teach at a university in the Rockies. Jennings, 21, who will soon return from a semester-long internship at 3M in St. Paul, Minn., has set a goal of earning a Ph.D. in environmental engineering and a career researching bioremediation and also possibly teaching. A native of Mantua, Ohio, Jennings moved with her family to Utah for her last two years of high school, ran track and worked for a veterinarian in addition to maintaining exemplary grades. Her family moved to Helena and Jennings received a Presidential Scholarship to MSU, where she also enrolled in the University Honors Program. Last summer she received an internship to University of California, Berkeley. She has been involved in an MSU Center for Biofilm Engineering research project investigating ways to clean up solvent from groundwater. Victoria O'Donnell, director of the MSU University Honors program and coordinator of MSU's applications, said the abundance of Goldwater recipients at MSU is a testimony to the university's professors as well as the departments that have nurtured the students' excellence. This year's MSU Goldwater recipients were among 302 winners selected from 1,164 applicants. Congress established the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship program in 1986 to support outstanding students in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. Other Montana winners of Goldwaters are: Amanda Deisher a physics and mathematics major at the University of Montana and Zachary R. Wilson, a microbiology/medical technology major at the University of Montana. Carol Schmidt
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